Talk about bittersweet.
Jared Goldberg crashed out of his last three world cup races, but still found a silver lining.
Despite crashing in the downhill world cup in Kitzbuehel, Austria on Saturday, Goldberg punched his ticket to the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018.
Goldberg qualified for the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team by being one of the top two U.S. men in the downhill world cup standings. He is currently 25th with 50 points. Ahead of him and also earning a starting spot in downhill in Korea next month is Bryce Bennett.
Bennett, the 6-foot-7 racer from Tahoe City, California, is 18th with 76 points; he qualified for his first Olympic team last week in combined and has now added downhill to his Olympic program.
Goldberg, now 26, competed at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games at the age of 22, making him the youngest member of the U.S. men’s alpine team in Sochi, and finished 11th in combined and 19th in giant slalom.
The Boston native posted a career-best ninth-place finish in downhill at the world cup in Val Gardena, Italy in December.
But his most memorable world cup came in February 2017, when he shocked the internet after somehow skiing away from a crazy 70-mph crash into a fence like it was nothing more than a little slip
Racing in Kvitfjell, Norway, Goldberg lost control, sailed through a gate and crashed into the safety netting. After remaining on his back for more than a minute, Goldberg was helped up and proceeded to ski down the hill.
Gary R. Blockus is a journalist from Allentown, Pennsylvania who has covered multiple Olympic Games. He is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
